试题

试题 试卷

logo

题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通

上海市七宝中学2020-2021学年高二上学期英语期末试卷(含完整音频)

阅读理解

Economically speaking, are we better off than we were ten years ago? Twenty years ago?

In their thirst for evidence on this issue, commentators seized on the recent report by the Census Bureau, which found that average household income rose by 5.2% in 2015. Unfortunately, that conclusion puts too much weight on a useful, but flawed and incomplete, statistic. Among the more significant problems with the Census's measure are that: 1) it excludes taxes, transfers, and compensation like employer-provided health insurance; and 2) it is based on surveys rather than data. Even if precisely measured, income data exclude important determinants of economic wellbeing, such as the hours of work needed to earn that income.

While thinking about the question, we came across a recently published article by Charles Jones and Peter Klenow, which proposes an interesting new measure of economic welfare. While by no means perfect, it is considerably more comprehensive than average income, taking into account not only growth in consumption per person but also changes in working time, life expectancy, and inequality. Moreover, it can be used to assess economic performance both across countries and over time.

The Jones-Klenow method can be illustrated by a cross-country example. Suppose we want to compare the economic welfare of citizens of the U.S. and France in 2005.

In 2005, as the authors observe: real consumption per person in France was only 60% as high as the U.S., making it appear that Americans were economically much better off than the French on average. However, that comparison omits other relevant factors: leisure time, life expectancy, and economic inequality. The French take longer vacations and retire earlier, so typically work fewer hours; they enjoy a higher life expectancy, presumably reflecting advantages with respect to health care, diet, lifestyle, and the like; and income and consumption are somewhat more equally distributed there than in the U.S. Because of these differences, comparing France's consumption with the U.S.'s overstates the gap in economic welfare.

Similar calculations can be used to compare the U.S. and other countries. For example, this calculation puts economic welfare in the United Kingdom at 97 % of U.S. levels, but estimates Mexican well-being at 22%. The Jones-Klenow measure can also assess an economy's performance over time. According to this measure, as of the early-to-mid-2000s, the U.S. had the highest economic welfare of any large country. Since 2007, economic welfare in the U.S. has continued to improve. However, the pace of improvement has slowed markedly.

Methodologically, the lesson from the Jones-Klenow research is that economic welfare is multi-dimensional. Their approach is flexible enough that in principle other important quality-of-life changes could be incorporated—for example, decreases in total emissions of pollutants and declines in crime rates.

(1)、What does the author say about the Jones-Klenow method?
A、It is widely used to compare the economic growth across countries. B、It revolutionizes the way of measuring ordinary people's livelihood. C、It focuses on people's consumption rather than their average income. D、It is a more comprehensive measure of people's economic well-being.
(2)、What do Jones and Klenow think of the comparison between France and the U. S. in terms of real consumption per person?
A、It reflected the existing big gap between the two economies. B、It neglected many important indicators of people's welfare. C、It covered up the differences between individual citizens. D、It failed to count in their difference in natural resources.
(3)、What is an advantage of the Jones-Klenow method?
A、It can accurately pinpoint a country's current economic problems. B、It can help to raise people's awareness of their economic well-being. C、It can diagnose the causes of a country's slowing pace of economic improvement. D、It can compare a country's economic conditions between different periods of time.
(4)、What can we infer from the passage about American people's economic well-being?
A、It is much better than that of their European counterparts. B、It has been on the decline ever since the turn of the century. C、It has not improved as much as reported by the Census Bureau. D、It has not been accurately assessed and reported since mid-2000s.
举一反三
根据短文理解,选择正确答案。

    Argentina in the late nineteenth century was an exciting place. Around 1870, it was experiencing an economic boom(繁荣), and the capital, Buenos Aires, attracted many people. Farmers, as well as a flood of foreigners from Spain and Italy, came to Buenos Aires seeking jobs. These jobs didn't pay well, and the people felt lonely and disappointed with their new life in the city. As the unhappy newcomers mixed together in the poor parts of the city, the dance known as the tango(探戈舞) came into being.

    At the beginning the tango was a dance of the lower classes. It was danced in the bars and streets. At that time there were many fewer women than men, so if a man didn't want to be left out, his only choice was to dance with another man so that he could attract the attention of the few available women. Gradually, the dance spread into the upper classes of Argentinean society and became more respectable.

    In Europe at this time, strong interest in dance from around the world was beginning. This interest in international dance was especially evident in Paris. Every kind of dance from ballet(芭蕾舞) to belly dancing could be found on the stages of the Paris theaters. After tango dancers from Argentina arrived in Europe, they began to draw the interest of the public as they performed their exciting dance in cafes. Though not everyone approved of the new dance, saying it was a little too shocking, the dance did find enough supporters to make it popular.

    The popularity of the tango continued to grow in many other parts of the world. Soldiers who returned to the United States from World War I brought the tango to North America. It reached Japan in 1926, and in 2003 the Argentinean embassy(大使馆) in Seoul hired a local tango dancer to act as a kind of dance ambassador, and promote tango dancing throughout South Korea.

阅读理解

    Japanese researchers say they have developed a new type of glass that can heal itself from cracks and breaks. Glass made from a low weight polymer (聚合物) called “polyether-thioureas” can heal breaks when pressed together by hand without the need for high heat to melt the material.

    The research, published in Science, by researchers led by Professor Takuzo Aida from the University of Tokyo, promises healable glass that could potentially be used in phone screens and other fragile (易碎的) devices, which they say are an important challenge for sustainable (可持续的) societies.

    While self-healing rubber and plastics have already been developed, the researchers said that the new material was the first hard substance of its kind that can be healed at room temperature. The new polymer glass is “highly robust mechanically yet can readily be repaired by compression (压紧) at broken surfaces”.

The characteristics of the polyether-thioureas glass were discovered by accident by a graduate school student named Yu Yanagisawa, who was preparing the material as a glue. Yanagisawa found that when the surface of the polymer was cut, the edges would adhere to each other, healing to form a strong sheet after being manually compressed for 30 seconds at 21℃. Further experiments found that the healed material regained its original strength after a couple of hours.

    Yanagisawa told NHK that he didn't believe the results at first and repeated his experiments several times to confirm the finding. He said, “I hope the repairable glass becomes a new environment-friendly material that avoids the need to be thrown away if broken.”

    This is not the first time a polymer has been suggested as a healable screen for devices such as smartphones. Researchers at the University of California suggested the use of polymer that could stretch to 50 times its original size and heal breaks within 24 hours.

    Smartphone manufacturers have already used self-healing materials in devices. LG's G Flex 2 shipped in 2016 with a coating on its back was capable of healing minor scratches over time, although failed to completely repair heavier damage.

    According to the research conducted by repair firm iMend, over 21% of UK smartphone users were living with a broken screen, with smashed displays being one of the biggest issues alongside poor battery life.

阅读理解

    From Dusner (3 speakers) to Kelabit (5 thousand) to Yiddish (1.5 million), these languages are spread, but like the Indian elephant, they are in danger of dying out. Dr. Chris Mazdzer, a researcher at Oxford University, organizing a meeting on endangered languages thinks there could be a novel way to keep minority languages alive: social media. He says, “Because young people text each other how they speak, even if they don't know how to spell it.”

    Minority languages are often at risk of being drowned(淹死)out by the bigger ones, which are spoken at school and in the media. But the appearance of Facebook and Twitter might just have the unexpected effect. Dr. Mazdzer speaks Frisian, which has 350,000 speakers. Communicating with his own language has given him thought about how languages could be saved in the future. “In Friesland, young people who don't learn much Frisian at school send each messages on social media in Frisian”, he says. In this way, a new generation of Frisian speakers keeps the language alive.

    Though many of these languages only have a few speakers, it's not just a small number of speakers that make a language endangered. Some languages were once widely spoken, but lost speakers over time. This can happen for many reasons, like only one language spoken in school or people moving away from their home and losing their language.

    Tweeting and texting in Frisian (or Sorbian, or Breton) is not enough in the long term, though. There are many other things we need to do. But why is a language worth saving in the first place? Because our languages are natural creations. Natural beauty needs to be protected.

阅读理解

    A 12-year-old with end stage cancer, the child's parents had recently moved her from the hospital to her home in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Some days later the girl's breath quickened, and her father phoned the family's hospice nurse. Please come, he said.

    The nurse knew the visit would require more than four hours of her time: a two-hour drive in each direction, plus her time with the girl. Why don't we connect over FaceTime, she asked. The father agreed, and they connected.

The nurse asked the father to move his daughter gently to her side, then to her back, to lift the child's shirt. The nurse would ask: What do you see, what concerns you, and the father would explain. In this fashion the pair examined the girl — the nurse on her computer, the father his iPad. Together they decided that the nurse's presence was not necessary, that the child had more time.

    Later, the father reported feeling comforted by the nurse. He appreciated her availability, the fact that she could see what he saw, and their ability to discuss it in real time.

Telemedicine has become a trend in America. Some hospitals have gone so far as to specially design telemedicine clinics. The room is staged like an office but with better lighting. There's a nice desk for the clinician to sit behind, a computer situated stage left, and books in the background. A physician taking a video call from home might wear a pair of headphones, equipped with a mic — to ensure whatever the patient says isn't broadcast to anyone off-camera.

    However, there is something more than the technology bit. According to David, the head of the telemedicine pilot the girl's family had been part of, there are some people who are great in person and you put them on camera they're a dead fish. “Some physicians are camera shy. For others, the physical isolation can actually help them be more empathetic.” He adds.

    “My experience is that, once you get past some initial hurdles, you can maintain an intimate, immediate connection with patients that in some cases may be more useful than even in-person interactions,” David says.

阅读理解

    30 November 2017,Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic defeated Scottish Andy Murray 6-1,7-5,7-6 in the Australian Open 2017 final to win the Grand Slam event (大满贯)for the sixth time. Murray has lost five Australian Open finals, facing Djokovic in all but one of them.

    Djokovic dominated the first set, winning 6-1 in just half an hour. He served seven aces (得分的发球)in total in the match. Murray fought back in the second set, which went up to twelve games lasting for 80 minutes. It was the longest set and Murray had nine aces, twelve in total for the match. Djokovic had 41 unforced errors, compared to Murray's 65.

    The third set lasted for 63 minutes and at 6-6 it went to a tie breaker, which Djokovic won 7-3, to win the eleventh Grand Slam title of his career.

    Djokovic has now equalled the record of Roy Emerson winning six Australian Opens. Djokovic after the match said,“Andy, you are a great champion and friend. I'm sure you'll have more opportunities to fight for this trophy”.Murray congratulated Djokovic, saying “I feel like I've been here before. Congratulations, Novak. Six Australian Opens is an incredible feat (业绩).The last year has been incredible. Good job.” He also left a message for his wife Kim Sears,“I'll be on the next flight home.” The couple is expecting a baby.

    Yesterday, Jamie Murray, Andy Murray's elder brother, won the Australian Open Men's doubles with Bruno Soares. Andy Murray was there in the audience, recording his brother's speech, to which Jamie said,“Andy, you should be in bed!”

阅读理解

    Each applicant to Harvard College is considered with great care. We consider each applicant to Harvard College as a whole person, and put enormous care into evaluating every application. We hope you will explore the information in this section to understand what we look for in our admissions process.

    How to Apply

    Submit your application through the Common Application, the Coalition Application, or the Universal College Application. Each is treated equally by the Admissions Committee. Complete and submit your materials as soon as possible to ensure full and timely consideration of your application. View our Application Tips for step-by-step information.

When to Apply

Date

Deadline

Date

Deadline

November 1

Early Action Deadline

March 1

Financial Aid Application deadline

November 1

Early Financial Aid Application deadline

Late March

Decision letters mailed

Mid - December

Early Auction decisions released

May 1

Reply date for Admitted Students

January 1

Regular Decision deadline

    What We Look For

    We seek promising students who will contribute to the Harvard community during their college years, and to society throughout their lives.

    While academic accomplishment is the basic requirement, the Admission Committee considers many other factors—strong personal qualities, special talents or excellences of all kinds, perspectives formed by unusual personal circumstances, and the ability to take advantage of available resources and opportunities.

    We outline everything you need to apply to Harvard.

Click https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/apply to get detailed requirements.

返回首页

试题篮